About

About us

We are a team of (cultural) anthropologists and visual makers. We are located in Auckland, New Zealand but we are globally mobile. We work in partnership with academia (University of Auckland, Yoobee School of Design, Animation College) when projects demand additional resources or when we have internships in either the visual arts or anthropology.

Corina Enache: Corina is a Senior Anthropologist with a dual Social Sciences & Business background. She is Romanian but lived & worked also in Germany/Austria/Brazil/The Netherlands. She founded the Sweet Spot in 2015 in Amsterdam and has been working at the intersection of business and anthropology ever since. Past projects involve the Traveltech, Fintech and Edutech sector. Corina is also involved in the startup sector as a mentor.

Amy Her-Lee: Amy is a Senior Designer with a background in Graphic Design and Product Design. Her less typical dream job growing up was to be a philosopher--like those that shared their understandings with others gathered around Ancient stone steps. You can find her living her dream by sharing her philosophies through her comics (@Chubbiscomics) and human-environment centric products. It’s only meant to be she now translates anthropology into visual tools for the benefit of people!

About (cultural) anthropology “I never take on unnecessary debt, other people do that, like my friend Mike who…”. This is a quote from a conversation with Tom, a New Zealander consumer of a financial debt product. In contrast to his statement he had plenty of unnecessary debt but he did not want to disclose that and in shifting the conversation to Mike told us all we needed to know about his own behaviour toward financial debt. In the New Zealand culture there is a stigma on “unnecessary” financial debt as this is seen as a form of character judgement. This stigma is the explainer, the decodifier of Tom’s answer and it took us on a path of understanding not just his attitude toward debt and its providers but also his process of accessing the financial product and the path(s) to improving his user experience.

So, anthropology is the study of people through culture and direct observation (ethnography). Culture (much like the example above) can be defined as the language, norms, values, beliefs, and other things that, together, form a people's way of life. It is a combination of elements that affect how people think and how they act.

What does this mean? By observing people in their real cultural environment we get closer to understanding their unbiased and real behaviour towards a brand/product/company/ employer as well as the root causes of that behaviour. This understanding is then used to shape consumer or employer strategies aimed to support/enhance/change behaviour.

Why is this useful? Deep behavioural understanding can significantly speed up the impact of consumer or employee strategies by providing clarity on where to focus and on what are the immediate actionable leverages to drive change.

To know more about us, what we value in people and how ethnography works watch below:

Here we aim to give insight into our team's core values and way of working.